Elevators are well-known devices for navigating people and cargo up and down within multi-story buildings. Traditionally, people and cargo are carried in elevator cars which navigate through hoistways provided vertically within the buildings. Each car is mounted on a plurality of rails to allow for linear translation of the car through the hoistway and is powered by a machine such as an electric motor connected to the car by way of belts, cables, or the like. A counterweight is also typically mounted on adjacent rails to facilitate the smooth movement of the car through the hoistway. The machine, as well as the other mechanical components of the elevator such as a sheave, governor or the like, is typically mounted on a bedplate provided at the top of the hoistway.
With relatively large elevators, the power and power electronics for energizing the machine are typically provided within a machine room provided at the top of the building. Alternatively, such equipment can be provided within a landing cabinet provided somewhere in the building other than the hoistway. This facilitates maintenance of the system, as well as connection of the building power grid and/or utility power grid to the machine, or if in a relatively large installation, machines for multiple elevators.
In more recent applications, the power used to energize the machine is not fixed or tied to an existing utility grid, but rather is provided by way of self-contained power sources, such as batteries. Among other things, such batteries lower power draw from the building power grid and often times are more reliable than utilities or generators in that they are not dependent on the utility power grid being up and running at all times.
While effective, as elevator systems have typically employed the aforementioned machine rooms or landing cabinets outside of the hoistways, with existing battery-powered elevator systems, the batteries are therefore currently housed outside the hoistway as well. Typically, the inverter and other power electronics used for the system are also mounted outside of the hoistway.